Content marketing is part and parcel of what makes an online business successful. After all, content is what gives your brand an authoritative voice in your industry.
When your target audience can rely on you for valuable insights and advice, they are more likely to buy what you have to offer.
The problem? There’s already a ton of content on the web, turning the competition into an uphill battle.
I’m not saying this to discourage you, by the way. On the contrary, I urge you not to let fierce competition deter you from your goal.
If you want to skyrocket your site’s monthly traffic, allow me to share with you these tried and tested content marketing strategies.
Let’s hop right in.
1. Find Long Tail Keywords
You may have written one of the most insightful blog posts about, say, woodcarving, but all your genius thoughts on the subject may go to waste if you don’t incorporate keyword research into your content marketing campaign.
Long story short, if you want your content to show up in Google searches, you have to target keywords that can draw qualified traffic to your website.
That’s easy! So I just optimize my content with search-friendly keywords, right?
Weeelll… that depends on what you mean by “search-friendly.”
Here’s the thing with keywords: If you target keywords that have a high search volume, ranking highly on search queries might very well be a pipe dream.
On the other hand, if you target keywords that people rarely use, there will be little to no traffic that will generate the number of leads you need to support your online business.
So what’s a digital marketer to do? Easy. Focus your attention on finding long-tail keywords.
Long-tail keywords, simply put, are search phrases with longer word counts (three or more). By virtue of their length, long-tail keywords are more specific than general keywords, have less competition, and therefore have higher conversion value.
To expand your broad keywords into longer variations, you can use keyword research tools like Ubersuggest.
It’s easy to use. Just go to the website, enter the seed keyword in the field box, specify the location, and then click “Look Up.” For our example below, let’s use the seed keyword “wireless headphones.”
Ubersuggest will automatically display hundreds of long-tail keyword suggestions based on the keyword you entered. As you can see from the screenshot below, we got a whopping 950 keyword suggestions.
On top of keyword suggestions, Ubersuggest also provides important traffic data such as Search Volume, CPC (cost per click), and Competition. With these key metrics, you can get a good grasp of which keywords might prove profitable for your content marketing campaign.
Ideally, you should target keywords with a competitiveness rating of up to 0.4. If a keyword has a search volume that’s high enough despite the low competition, then chances are it will yield you better conversions.
Special tip: You can even refine your keyword list by targeting keywords with high commercial intent. To do this, just add transactional terms like “buy” or “affordable” into the Filter Results box found on the lower left portion of the page.
In our example, all keyword suggestions show a high competitiveness rating (way over our target range of 0.4). That said, “best cheap earbuds” and “best cheap headphones” deserve consideration just for their high search volume alone.
We still need long-tail keywords with low competition, however. So let’s refine our list further. Let’s add another commercial intent keyword into the mix for good measures, such as “review.”
There. As you can see from the results above, the keyword “headphone reviews” has a high search volume while still being able to maintain a low competition rating of 0.37.
Once you have a long list of long-tail keywords, your next course of action is to incorporate them in your content marketing campaign.
Keep in mind, however, that there’s more to on-page SEO than just sprinkling your content with long-tail keywords. Here are additional tips that can make your content even more search-friendly.
- Use SEO-friendly URLs
- Mention your keyword in the title
- Add multimedia content (images, videos, infographics, etc.)
- Include targeted keywords in at least one subheading
2. Use High Emotion Keywords in your Headline
So you’re able to rank your website higher in search engines thanks to your considerable keyword research skills. Great job!
But what if you’re still unable to drive enough traffic to your site?
If this happens, chances are your headlines aren’t enticing enough to make your target audience click on the link. In short, your title sounds so lame it might need crutches.
If you want your articles to get more clicks, you have to target high emotion keywords and incorporate them into your headlines.
High emotion keywords, as the term itself, implies, should be able to invoke emotion from the reader, whether it’s anger, curiosity, sadness, joy, or some other emotion that motivates the reader to click your site.
For example, if you’re offering a program that helps people lose their belly fat, you can target the following keywords in your content marketing campaign:
Lose belly fat fast
Lose belly fat quick
Lose belly fat in 1 week
You can use Google Suggest to come up with more keyword variations containing emotional phrases.
You can even dig deeper by using Ubersuggest. Just unclick Google Keyword Planner to the left of the keyword suggestions and you’ll be taken to a long list of high emotion long tail keywords.
Skim through the results and you should be able to find high emotion long-tail keywords with high conversion potential within a couple of minutes.
From the screenshot above, you can see that both keywords “lose belly fat fast with exercise” and “lose belly fat fast exercises” drive a lot of traffic with little competition. Lots of potentials there.
3. Drum up engagement within your blog
Engaging your targeted audience on social media remains a viable strategy for moving them down your conversion funnel.
But if there’s zero to little interaction with your own space (meaning your blog), then you’re doing it wrong.
Here’s the rub: Even if your engagement is high on social media platforms, one thing remains the same: you’re running it on someone else’s platform and business model. In the final analysis, there’s no telling when the rug is going to be swept under you.
It’s always an excellent idea to diversify your platforms, so go ahead and use social media sites to engage with your followers.
Just don’t forget to pay more attention to your blog audience. After all, it’s the place where qualified leads are able to join your email list. In short, your blog is where the real action is.
4. Use the ‘Skyscraper Technique’
Created by Backlinko’s Brian Dean, the Skyscraper Technique is a tried-and-tested SEO strategy that turns content into high-quality backlinks.
And don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as it sounds. You don’t even have to be knowledgeable about SEO to pull this off.
The whole process can be broken down into three simple steps:
- Find top-rated content. As a content research tool, Buzzsumo can help you find a list of well-received content for popular topics within your niche.
- Create something similar but make it better. Again, the idea here is to create something better. Don’t just “steal” somebody else’s ideas. Make your version more in-depth, update old information, add new data and make corrections if necessary.
- Reach out to people who have shared similar content and try to get them to share yours. The fact that you’re promoting your content to someone who is already interested in the subject matter (he shared something similar after all) will bode well for your chances of getting that backlink.
That’s it.
The next step is to repeat the process for other trending or popular topics within your niche. Do it consistently well and you’ll be able to build a robust backlink profile that benefits your content marketing campaign.
5. Create great content
This particular step sounds obvious, but there’s more to creating great content than just writing well-written and insightful articles (though you have to do that too for better results).
BuzzSumo did us all a favor by analyzing 100 million articles and coming up with a list of the attributes shared by the most popular articles. And these are:
- Long-form — 3,000 to 10,000 words
- Includes at least one image
- Appeal to people’s emotions
- In the form of a how-to article, a list, or an infographic
- Looks trustworthy
- Shared by a popular influencer
- Gets promoted on a regular basis
Of course, some of these attributes may not be applicable to your niche or industry. The best course of action is to aim for those that you think will make your content better.
Conclusion
Remember, to be successful in content marketing, you need to realize that you’re playing the long game. The strategies mentioned above will yield you nothing if you don’t integrate them into a unified framework that drives your growth strategy.
Are there other content marketing strategies you’d like to share? If you answered with a “yes,” feel free to share them in the comments section below!